The F/V Wizard is a crab fishing boat that can be seen on the TV show Deadliest Catch

Deadliest Catch

Deadliest Catch is a documentary/reality television series produced by Original Productions for the Discovery Channel. It portrays the real life events aboard fishing vessels in the Bering Sea during the Alaskan king crab and C. opilio crab fishing seasons.The Aleutian Islands port of Dutch Harbor,...

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Wizard was built by the US Navy in 1945 as a fuel oil barge designated YO-210 for service during World War II. After the war was over, the oiler boats were only used for practice targets and building Artificial reefs. The Navy sold YO-210 in March 1974.

In 1978, John Jorgensen bought the boat. He outfitted it to be used for crab fishing on the Bering Sea. Two of the eight tanks were removed for extra engine room during this conversion. Four of the original holding tanks are now used for storing crab, and the two forward tanks are used for dry storage and refrigerated seawater unit. They fished Bairdi crab and the small-population of Opilio crab from the time the boat started fishing to the late '80s. In the late '80s, the King crab

King crab

King crabs, also called stone crabs, are a superfamily of crab-like decapod crustaceans chiefly found in cold seas. Because of their large size and the taste of their meat, many species are widely caught and sold as food, the most common being the red king crab, Paralithodes camtschaticus.King...

population recovered, and the population of Opilio crab were booming. During this time, the Wizard was one of the top 10 crab producers. In 2005, the boat was sold to Keith Colburn. After
Colburn bought the boat, he gave it a new paint job.